On January 26th in Athens, Greece, an American anarchist pressed attempted murder charges against Delta and Dias motorcycle police, as well as the relevant commanding officers, for a beating she suffered while demonstrating against the IMF on November 15th, 2010. Meanwhile, now over 900 members of the American and European scholarly community, including Noam Chomsky, Judith Butler, and Immanuel Wallerstein, have denounced the behavior of the Delta police towards demonstrations and specifically the beating of the American demonstrator, calling the attack on her “nearly fatal”.

Her lawyer, Giota Massouridou, claims that the police’s actions were intentionally lethal given that she was beaten for a prolonged amount of time while clearly bleeding from the head and unconscious, and that the medical reports show that the police targeted the most vulnerable parts of her body — repeatedly beating her on the head, neck, and mid-section. The fact that the officers dragged her limp body several meters to the sidewalk evidences that they were aware that she was completely unconscious and unresponsive, and yet they continued the beating on the sidewalk — as witnesses say — for up to two minutes. Massouridou also says that given the American woman’s petite size, it obviously would have been difficult for her to sustain such an attack from multiple policemen, and that it is by pure luck she is alive.